In the Waning Light

by Loreth Anne White

  “Noah, open every cabinet you can find, feel along the edges of paneling for gaps, or levers. Some yachts have escape doors in really unusual places. Start on the starboard side, I’ll start here.” She pocketed the scissors and started fingering along grooves in the paneling. A wave of dizziness made her stumble. She sat on the bed a moment, trying to marshal her brain.

  Think. Focus.

  She’d seen the outside of Tommy’s yacht. She knew the size and shape and the upstairs layout. The top deck had a salon and bridge area, with wet bar. Tommy had been about to lead her down into what he’d called the lower salon when she’d heard Emma scream. The lower salon must house the galley, because there’d been no galley on the main deck. So this master stateroom must be on the lowest deck, downstairs from the middle deck salon and galley. From the tapering shape of this stateroom, she guessed they were in the prow. The engine room must be on the other side of the locked door. But the small bathroom, to the right of the door, extended beyond. Which meant the back wall of the bathroom was also likely the wall of the engine room. She’d seen two motor yachts of a similar design that had emergency escape hatches leading from the head into the engine room.

  She got up, went into the small bathroom area, and felt around the mirror. She started as she caught sight of her own reflection—hair wild and matted with blood, her face streaked with it. A gaping gash along her cheekbone. Don’t think, don’t look.

  You look like a witch, Meggie-Peg …

  Thanks a lot, Sherry. Help me out here, will you …

  She opened the bathroom cabinet. Among the toiletries inside was a midsize can of hairspray. She slipped the can into her jacket pocket—anything for a weapon. And then she found it—riveted into the wall of the shower, a watertight escape hatch to the engine room, with an inset key handle. She flipped the handle out, twisted, and the vacuum door popped open with a suction sound. Noise from the big diesel engines drummed through the space and vibrated into her bones. Exhilaration burst through her chest as she peered into the dark hole.

  “Noah.” She stepped out of the head. “There was a flashlight in that hatch over there. Pass it to me. Quick.”

  Meg flicked it on and panned her beam around the interior of the engine room. Chrome and pipes gleamed. She could smell fuel, oil. At the back of the engine, a chrome ladder bolted into the side led up to what she guessed must be an access hatch that opened out into the aft deck area, right outside the glass sliders.

  Anxiety laced into her initial bolt of exhilaration. She ran her flashlight beam over the walls, lighting upon a small fire ax clamped to the side, beside a fire extinguisher.

  “Okay, Noah,” she said, exiting the head. “Here’s the plan. You’re going to stay down here, where you’re safe. Do not move. Do not come through that engine room, even if you hear bad things, understand?”

  He paled. His mouth tightened and the blue vein on his brow swelled. But he nodded.

  “I’m going to go through the engine room, and up out of the hatch. And I’m going to see if I can catch him by surprise.”

  “What are you going to do to him?”

  “I don’t know, Noah. But I have to stop him.” Or he will kill us both as soon as he gets far enough offshore.

  Tears pooled and slid soundlessly down his face. He started to shake. Meg held his shoulders steady, and kissed his forehead. “Have faith, Noah Sutton. We’re going to get through this. Got it?”

  He nodded.

  And she slipped into the head and climbed through the hatch into the engine room. She moved past the droning engines, the smell of machinery and diesel strong in her nostrils. She unclamped the fire ax, and holding it in one hand, biting down on pain, she climbed the ladder, pausing to cling on as the boat yawed violently. At the top, she twisted the handle on the hatch, and pushed. It opened easily on hydraulic arms. The scent of sea and cold slammed into her instantly. Her heart kicked. Mouth dry, body wire tight, she climbed out of the hatch. Wind whipped her. She closed the hatch behind her for fear a wave would crash over the stern and douse the engines.

  Shaking with cold, or fear, or adrenaline, she wasn’t sure, she crouched on her haunches, balancing with one hand on the deck, the ax in the other. She peered through the glass sliders. A small row of lights burned in the cockpit area. Tommy sat in one of the two captain’s chairs, hunched forward in concentration as he tried to navigate into the storm. Meg got up slowly, and reached for the door.

  Blake used a spotlight to scan the gravel around the burning wreck. He worked in increasing circles. Smoke burned his nasal passages. His eyes watered. He held his jaw tight and his heart thumped slow and steady. He focused on keeping panic at bay. He used his military training now, his mind kicking back into an old zone, one he’d perfected in the war arena when he’d often been the only soldier who’d stood between the life and death of a blown-up comrade, when he’d sometimes had to amputate, sew body parts, stop bleeding, all under the rattle of enemy fire. When he’d had to calm the raw terror in the eyes of a fellow soldier in great pain.

  He’d found the house empty. No Noah. No sign of a sitter. And the fact that Meg’s rig was here at the marina meant she’d returned from Tommy’s party. Either she was inside that burning wreck, or she’d been inside the house when it happened. Perhaps she’d let the sitter go when she’d arrived.

  He stopped as something in his beam of light winked back from the slush-covered gravel. Dropping to his haunches, Blake picked up a diamond ring. On it hung a small, broken chain.

  Meg’s engagement ring.

  His stomach folded over. He pocketed it, looked further. A clump of long, red hair caught his beam. He lifted it out of the slush, examining it closely. It had roots and bits of scalp attached, as if it had been pulled out. He lowered his beam back to the ground. Deep drag marks in dirt. He panned his light further up the driveway. Tire marks. Recent ones, in the slush, now starting to fill with wet snow. Prints. Big, and smaller ones—Noah’s?

  Blake surged to his feet, heart beating faster.

  There was no cell reception. Phone lines were down. Power was out. Cops and the Coast Guard were inundated. He thought of his brother’s confession, how Tommy Kessinger had masterminded this. He was the one man who truly stood to lose everything if the truth came out—the puppeteer. The man who’d killed Sherry. A manipulative, sociopathic bully who had a controlling interest in just about everyone’s business in town. Including Dave Kovacs for sheriff now. Tommy was the man who needed most to silence Meg.

  He had to act. Fast. Make a choice. It was a gamble, but he had to take it. If Tommy had taken Meg in a vehicle from this marina, where would he go? Where best to hide her? And get rid of her?

  It struck him suddenly—Deliah Sproatt. Drowned at sea. Tommy’s yacht. He ran for his truck, praying to God that it was the sitter who had taken Noah somewhere to higher ground, somewhere safe. Yet he feared the worst.

  Counting on the noise of the storm to drown out her movements, Meg slowly slid open the glass slider. She entered through a crack, and shut it quietly behind her. On the glass coffee table she saw a lighter in an ashtray. She reached for it, slipped it into her pocket, and moved forward in a slow crouch.

  The boat yawed, and her heart kicked. She grabbed onto the back of the leather sofa for balance. Terror rose into her heart along with pure white hatred as she looked at Tommy in his captain’s chair, bathed by soft blue light from the instrument panel. Her palm grew sweaty around the handle of the ax. What was she actually going to do? Kill him? Hit him in the head with the blade of an ax? She didn’t know if she could do this. Inside her belly she started to shake.

  You’re a fighter, Meggie-Peg. You’ve got to do this.

  There has to be another way, Sherry.

  He will kill you. He will kill Noah. Unless you stop him first. Think like a cop: don’t necessarily aim to kill, but aim to stop—with whatever force required—the threat.

  Think of what you saw him doing to me that day. How he rape
d and strangled me. Think of how he smiled at you, and kissed you when you came home, and how charming he is on the outside—a snake. A sick narcissist. All wonderful until you cross him, and then he turns deadly. Think of Ty Mack. Of Dad. And Mom. Think of Henry.

  Meggie, think above all of Noah. That boy does not deserve this. It’s not his battle. You cannot let him die, and Tommy will kill him if you don’t do something while you still can … you’d both already be dead if you hadn’t escaped the camper … there can be no doubting his intent …

  Sweat prickled along her brow. She clutched the ax handle in both hands. Her heart jackhammered. Slowly she moved forward in a crouch. She entered the cockpit area, and raised the ax high, hesitating again, unable to do it, just kill a man in cold blood from behind. He spun suddenly around in his captain’s chair. He held a gun at his waist, and it was aimed at her.

  Meg gasped.

  His finger curled around the trigger.

  “Marvelous,” he said, “how windows can function so perfectly as mirrors at night.”

  She swallowed, lowering the ax, her body trembling.

  He raked his eyes over her. A slow smile curved his lips. “Wondered if you’d come around again. So much better to be present for one’s own demise, don’t you think?”

  “You did it.” Her voice came out hoarse. “You strangled Sherry. You raped and killed my sister. I remember. I saw.”

  He angled his head, as if assessing a strange animal.

  “Say something!”

  “What’s to say? Sorry? She was a whore. She paid.”

  “My … my mother …” Her voice started to shake. Blood leaked afresh from her head wound—too much, she was losing too much. Must stop it. Getting weak.

  “Tara was getting far too close. It was an easy matter to empty capsule powder into her tea. It’s pretty tasteless, from what I learned from Emma’s books. All I had to do, once she’d drunk her fill, was help sweet Tara Brogan up to her dead daughter’s bedroom, and leave an empty pill container at the bedside. Nice touch, don’t you think—Sherry’s room? While little Meggie was all barricaded up in her own room down the hall, headphones on her ears.”

  The boat listed, and she stumbled sideways, reeling into the bar counter.

  An alarm sounded on his control panel, and a radar beep began on his monitor. Worry darted through his eyes and he glanced quickly over his shoulder. Meg used his momentary distraction to swing the ax out to her right. She aimed for the side of his neck. But as she brought the ax down, he ducked sideways, and tried to roll out of his chair. The armrest stopped him from making it all the way, and her blade sliced into his upper right arm. He howled like an animal, his gun clattering to the floor. Bile lurched into Meg’s throat. Eyes wild, he lunged for her, and backhanded her across the face with all his might. She was flung backward onto the floor. Her ax skittered across the wood.

  The warning blips on his monitor sounded louder, faster. They were on a collision course with something. Reef. Rocks.

  Tommy clamped his left hand over the bleeding wound on his upper right arm and leaned over the controls, trying to steer the boat away from whatever was making the radar scream. Waves were washing the boat sideways. She could hear surf. They had to be colliding with Hobart’s Reef.

  Meg struggled onto her feet. She closed her hand around the can of hairspray in her pocket and pulled it out. She reached for the gas lighter. Staggering forward, her vision blurring, she depressed the nozzle, releasing a hissing stream of spray. She flicked the lighter and the stream ignited with a whoosh.

  She kept the nozzle depressed and lurched toward Tommy with her flaming torch. His hair and clothing caught fire instantly. He spun around, horror on his face, as he dived for the carpeted floor in the salon. He rolled, screaming. The smell of burning hair was acrid.

  Meg stumbled toward the wall that held a fire extinguisher. Her half-formed goal was to use it to knock him out cold, then put out the flames before the whole boat caught fire. But the prow of the yacht smacked into something and the whole boat shuddered. It came to a groaning standstill, engines still growling. A wave crashed over the prow, rolling the yacht sideways. Alarms started clanging. Tommy pulled himself along the floor toward the sofa. Grabbing the blanket that hung over the back, he batted out the rest of the smoldering flames on his body. Another wave crashed over the front of the boat. The yacht listed further. They were banked on something. Tommy crawled to the glass slider, leaving a trail of blood. He staggered to his feet, opened the slider.

  The boat groaned and yawed yet further. Meg slipped in blood and fell hard to the floor. Under the console she saw his gun. She crawled over, groped for it, rolled onto her side.

  Tommy was outside on the aft deck, fighting to unclamp a fiberglass life-raft container. He got it free and wobbled with it in his arms toward the starboard gunwale. He threw it over. Lying on her side, Meg aimed, fired. Glass shattered. She struggled to sit up, and fired again. He jolted, his body going stiff. A soft explosion sounded as the life-raft case exploded open in the water, and the raft began to inflate. She tried to crawl closer, getting dizzy. But he went overboard. And was gone.

  Meg tried to get to her feet, but her brain spun, and her vision turned black as she dropped back to the floor, and passed out.

  When she came around again she had no idea how long she’d been gone. An hour? Half a minute? Fire was crackling up the blinds on the port side of the bridge. Must have caught them with her makeshift flamethrower. Extinguisher? Where was it? Still affixed to the wall. She pushed herself to her feet. Gasping in pain, she freed the extinguisher, pulled the pin, squeezed the trigger, and released a jet of white foam. She aimed it at the base of the flames. Another alarm began to clang. Coming from the lower decks. Engine room? A breach in the hull—taking on water?

  Noah.

  She had to get Noah. Meg dropped the extinguisher and made for the stairs, falling down into the lower deck salon. She lurched for the next set of steps. Everything was at an odd angle as the boat was going over. Water sloshed on the floor. The hull had been breached, seawater pouring in. Ice cold. She reached the stateroom door, tried to yank it open. It wouldn’t give. No key in the lock. No mechanism to open it. Had Tommy taken the key? Banging sounded from the other side.

  “Help. Meg! Please, help me!”

  “Noah, wait! I’m coming.” She staggered back up the listing stairs, using the rails to pull herself up, and she made her way through the glass sliders and onto the aft deck. She tugged open the engine hatch. Thick, black smoke billowed out. Her heart stopped, then kicked into an erratic stutter. Water must have short-circuited the electrics, causing the engines to catch fire. She shut the hatch. Oh, God. Noah was trapped. The boat was going down.

  Meg fought her way back up to the salon, found her ax. She half slid, half fell down to the lower deck level. “Noah! Stand back!” she yelled, swinging her ax high. She struck it down into the door. Wood splintered. She yanked the ax out, tried again. And again. But she was not breaking through. The wood was reinforced. She began to sob, desperation rising as she struck yet again, the force of impact convulsing up her arms, into her brain, spearing pain across her ribs. Blood leaked down her face. She heard a crack, then a groan and crunch. The boat canted further sideways. Water sloshed higher around her ankles.

  “Meg! Help! Water is coming in. I can smell smoke from the bathroom!”

  “Noah, go close that hatch in the shower.” She struck her ax down again.

  Blake found Tommy’s SUV with its vanity plates parked up on the Whakami Bay Harbor promenade—it had been driven right up the boardwalk. But his custom motor yacht was gone.

  The harbor was dark, deserted; ripped lanterns blew across the open areas, and torn election posters plastered the docks. Yachts clanked and bashed each other angrily in the roiling water. Blake stood at the top of the gangway in the wind and driving snow.

  The fact Tommy’s vehicle was here, and the yacht gone, went partway to confirm his gue
ss—he might have taken Meg and Noah out into the storm. He might even be fleeing for good himself.

  Blake could stand here and do nothing. Or he could choose one course of action, and fast.

  Panning his flashlight over the vacant mooring space, something on the dock bounced light back at him. He hurried down the gangway. Between two boards was a shiny piece of stone. He dropped to his haunches. With cold fingers, he fished it out, and his heart imploded when he saw what it was. The “magic” piece of sea glass Geoff had given Noah. He fisted it.

  His boy had been here.

  Whatever gods were watching over them were leaving him signs. He had to believe they were still alive.

  Blake surged to his feet and his gaze lit on the whale-watching boat moored in front of the vacant space left by Tommy’s yacht. Noah’s words filled his brain.

  There’ll be rides in the harbor on the whale-watching boat. For free. Every hour, even in the dark …

  It was a custom aluminum-hulled Zodiac. Highly stable on rough seas, yet light, with a capacity to offer passengers an exhilarating ride at extremely high speeds. Emotion slammed into his chest when he saw the key was in the ignition—all ready to take kids on trips around the harbor before the storm had broken, and someone had forgotten to secure the keys when it had.

  Blake moved fast. He climbed into the rigid-hull inflatable, got behind the console, fired the ignition. Engines grumbled to throaty life, water frothing around him. He hit a switch and a row of spotlights speared to life, cutting through the darkness and turning the snow silver-white.

  He cast off lines, maneuvered away from the dock, and gave gas, gunning for the channel and harbor mouth. His mind raced as wind sliced his face, and his boat slammed against waves with a rhythmic thud, force enough to damage kidneys if sustained at any great distance. His trump was speed. Tommy’s boat was high-end, but heavy and slow. Where would a man running from the law in a motor yacht go?